Dmitry Sevastiyanov, Director General of Gazprom Space Systems, and Janos Solymosi, Director for S/M & Space of Bonn Hungary Electronics Ltd. (BHE), Member of the Space Generation Advisory Council of Hungary, signed today an Agreement of Cooperation at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum 2017.

The document was inked in the presence of Alexey Miller, Chairman of the Management Committee of Gazprom.

The Agreement provides for the development of tools and technologies to be used in telecommunications and deployed to monitor gas transmission facilities. It is planned, inter alia, to build a mobile telecommunications infrastructure with the purpose of supporting flight control of and data transmission from unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that monitor gas pipelines. Moreover, the parties will examine the possibility to introduce re-transmitters of UAV remote control signals in order to increase the flight range of UAVs. The need for such re-transmitters is explained by the considerable length of Gazprom's gas pipelines.

Gazprom is also interested in creating a small remote laser-based gas leak detector, which could be installed in drones. The existing detection devices are designed only for helicopters.